I’ve noticed humans can have a strange quirk, no matter where we are, we tend to think the good stuff is somewhere else. The good old “The grass is greener on the other side.” We often imagine life being grander, more meaningful, better, just over the horizon. Meanwhile, there’s probably someone standing on the other side of that horizon staring back at your patch of earth thinking, “One day, I’ll go there.”
When I taught outdoor education and sea kayaking, I would often tell my clients that where we were climbing, hiking or paddling was an exotic destination for someone a world away. Then encourage them to view our current situation from that perspective.
Someone else’s once-in-a-lifetime destination could be in your own backyard. Someone out there is right now is scrolling through travel blogs and whispering, “One day I’d love to surf on the coast of Queensland!”, or “Fishing in America’s Gulf Coast bayous must be amazing”.
We can be a funny species that way. We’ll spend thousands chasing distant beauty when half the time it exists just outside our back door.
The Lure of Somewhere Else
As kids, we dream of adventure — jungles, deserts, mountains, castles or pirates. Treasure maps always lead somewhere else, far, far away. The treasure was never hidden near home. The adventure was always imagined to be in a distant place that was hard to get to.
Then we reach adulthood, and with it, the ability to travel. Suddenly we’re convinced that peace, happiness, and adventure are only available by the week, in Bali, or the Bahamas. We chase sunsets and cocktails in far off places, forgetting the sun sets just fine right where we are.
Don’t get me wrong, travel is a wonderful thing. Seeing the world, and different cultures changes you and opens your mind. But sometimes, I think we travel less to see but more to escape the ordinary. The trouble is the ordinary can follow us, like luggage. If we tend to grumble about the price of coffee at our local cafe, that headspace will make it through customs with you just fine.
I think John Gierach once wrote that fly-fishing was less about the fish and more about the places it took you. Oftentimes those ‘places’ can be close to our backyards — we simply don’t recognize them because they are wearing their “ordinary” clothes.
The Tourist at Home
Could we treat our backyard like an exotic destination? Wander out the back door with the same curiosity and reverence usually reserved for somewhere stamped in the passport?
Pack a small bag, or load the canoe. Walk a local trail, or paddle around a bend in the nearest river. Take a bottle of wine, a pair of binoculars and a notebook or camera. Make your way to an area you’ve never been before, and just sit and listen, and look around.
You might see tiny school of minnows flickering like silver confetti under the hull, or dragonflies hovering overhead in the trees like fairies, maybe a turtle sunning itself on a log as if auditioning for a nature documentary.
Imagine David Attenborough narrating, “Here, in the wilds, the common slider turtle basks in the warm sunlight, blissfully unconcerned he’s being watched.”
Take some photos, write in the notebook, enjoy your glass of wine, and realize you’re doing something in a place that someone else is only dreaming about. It may be your ordinary, but it’s also an exotic destination for someone a world away.
Perhaps the difference between being exotic and being common isn’t distance, but attention. Maybe wonder doesn’t live in the passport stamps, but in how we look at the world.
Someone Else’s Dream
Imagine this scenario.
A German backpacker has flown half way around the world just to surf the very beach down the road from your house in Australia. He’s sunburned, thoroughly stoked, and carrying a surfboard that costs a small fortune.
You meet him in the car park.
He asks, “Do you come here often?”
And you reply, “Nah not really, it’s too crowded, and I don’t like sand in my shorts.”
He’d probably look at you like you hate puppies. “But this… this is Australia! Sunshine! Ocean! Kangaroos!”
And with a bit of sarcasm you might say, “Yeah, mate. And magpies. Don’t forget the magpies, and bloody green ants.”
Here’s someone who’d crossed the globe to experience what you might write off as merely background noise to your life. The surf, the sun, the salt air — all the things he’d dream about while shoveling snow back home in Germany.
I think everybody has a tendency do it. The Parisians roll their eyes at the Eiffel Tower. New Yorkers not paying attention to their astounding skyline. Australians tend to not give the “Outback” much of a second thought
And yet, somewhere, someone, is looking at your part of the world, your park, your coast, your backyard, and thinking: One day.
The Myth of Elsewhere
Francis Whiting might have once said that travel doesn’t make you better; it just makes you more you. If you’re impatient, you’ll be impatient at the Colosseum . If you’re generous and happy, you’ll be generous and happy in Ecuador . And if you’re a chronic overpacker, you’ll still carry way too much onto the plane.
We romanticize the idea of “elsewhere” because it’s unspoiled by our reality. The places we haven’t visited are still a mystery. But once we get there, the same life ingredients we left behind are also there: weather, traffic, mosquitoes, overpriced coffee. Conversely, the things we imagine are exciting in that far away place, are actually with us all along.
We might think adventure may lie in far away places, but a lot of life’s mysteries can be found in our own backyard. Walk around a local park or beach, find a spot to sit still for a while and you might see a family of creatures that live in a log or a tide pool. The heron that lands by the creek long enough for you to watch it stalk and catch its next meal.
Maybe the point isn’t to escape the ordinary, but to learn to see past it. When we travel to new places we tend to look for interesting things, but not so much at home.
Why We Miss It
So why do we overlook our own surroundings?
I guess it’s partly novelty. The human brain loves change — it lights up when we’re surprised and stimulated. After a while, our brains go “seen it” and tunes out. It’s the same reason we don’t see the car keys on the table.
And maybe marketing. Billions are spent convincing us happiness is elsewhere — on beaches, in mountain lodges, on yachts with infinity pools. No one’s really running ads saying “Rediscover the magic of your shed!”
But mostly, I think it’s habit. We forget to look. We stop paying attention. And attention, it turns out, is the key to wonder.
Francis Whiting, an Australian columnist, once joked that the best way to make your town exciting again is to have a visitor point out all the things you’ve stopped seeing; “Look at the dolphins! You have dolphins right there under your boat!” they’ll say, eyes wide. And you’ll shrug, “Yeah, but the beer’s gone a bit warm.”
It’s a humbling reminder: the extraordinary doesn’t stop being extraordinary just because we’re used to it.
The Exchange Program
Imagine a global swap program where everyone trades backyards for a week. The English gets an Aussie backyard with kookaburras and magpies. Australians get a snowy German forest. Americans might swap their porches for Japanese bonsai gardens.
We’d might come out of it marveling at how exotic our own patch of dirt actually is. The German would rave about the lorikeets and galahs. The Aussie might weep at the sight of a fox in the snow. And everyone would have a chance to see their own gardens with fresh eyes.
Maybe we don’t need a plane ticket — just a change in perspective.
The Backyard Pilgrimage
Gierach wrote about the “home water” — that local body of water you fish over and over until it becomes sacred through repetition. You know every rock, every bend, every stubborn trout that refuses your fly. You could go anywhere, but you keep coming back because it’s yours.
Maybe we all have a “home water.” A place we’ve worn smooth with our presence. It could be a backyard, a park, a corner café, or a bench by the beach.
It’s not glamorous. But it is familiar, and comforting, and quietly miraculous if you pay attention.
The thing about sacred places is that they don’t declare themselves. You have to decide. You have to say, “This — this patch of sunlight, this breeze, this cafe — this is my Shangri-La .”
What the Tourists Know
Every now and then, you might see a group of tourists snapping photos of something you’d never look twice at — a mural, a fruit stall, a street musician. They’ll beam, take selfies, and then you might realize: they’re right. It is beautiful. I just forgot.
Tourists find the secrets we’ve forgotten: the world is astonishing if you’re seeing it for the first time.
So here’s a thought experiment. Tomorrow morning, wake up and pretend you’re visiting your home area for the first time. Take the scenic route to work. Walk instead of drive. Ask questions. Notice things.
Hopefully you’ll find something you’ve never seen before — even if it’s just how good the light looks at a certain hour, or the way the neighbor’s jacaranda turns the footpath purple.
The Grand Conclusion (with a glass of wine)
After all these backyard expeditions and philosophical wanderings, I’ve come to a simple truth:
Everywhere is exotic to someone.
Everywhere is ordinary to someone else.
And the difference lies in the eyes doing the looking.
You don’t necessarily have to cross the Andes Mountains on horse back to feel awestruck. Sometimes it’s in the way the morning light hits your backyard trees. Sometimes it’s the smell of fresh rain on dry earth. Sometimes it’s just sitting with a cup of tea, realizing you’re standing in the middle of someone else’s dream location.
So, next time you find yourself scrolling through travel blogs, dreaming of far-off lands, take a walk outside. Listen. Look. Smell. Pretend you’ve just arrived.
You might discover that the adventure you’ve been saving for is already happening — right there in your own backyard.
Journey Island Style 